System and method for binaural noise reduction in a sound processing device

In one embodiment, the present invention provides a sound processing device with a binaural input and binaural output, where “binaural input” means at least one microphone mounted in or near each ear of the device user, and “binaural output” means at least one output signal directed to each ear. The device may be comprised of two parts connected by a wired or wireless link. The device comprises: at least one microphone in or near each ear for the transduction of the sound at each ear; a signal-to-noise estimation module to estimate the signal-to-noise ratio present at each ear; a comparison and selection module to compare the signal-to-noise ratios present at the two ears and select the ear with the greater signal-to-noise ratio; a noise reduction control module that uses the spectral and temporal information from the selected ear signal to control two identical noise reduction modules; two identical noise reduction modules that process the signals from the two ears, under the control of the control module; and two output modules that amplify the output signals from the noise reduction modules appropriately for each ear and present the amplified signals as sound or other signals to each ear of the device user. The device may be implemented in dedicated hardware embodiment or by software running on a microprocessor.